"Watch out, the stove will burn you," "Ooh, ice cream headache!" Students construct their conceptions about heat and temperature through their own intuitions about daily life experiences. As a result, misconceptions can be born from these constructed concepts. The activity described here addresses student misconceptions about thermal insulation…

Selection bias is a problem for mathematics education researchers interested in using observational rather than experimental data to make causal inferences about the effects of different instructional methods in mathematics on student outcomes. Propensity score methods represent 1 approach to dealing with such selection bias. This article…

This contribution reports about a seven-month long video-based study in two regular Flemish sixth-grade mathematics classrooms. The focus is on teachers' approaches towards problem solving. In our analysis we distinguished between a paradigmatic-oriented (focus on the mathematical structure) and a narrative-oriented (focus on the contextual…

As more and more people use computers to complete their work and solve problems in the workplace, computing education is emphasized for students of all levels and disciplines in Taiwan. However, the computing education in Taiwan can hardly be recognized as effective and satisfactory. Many inappropriate examples that lack context are used in…

Some have proposed that realistic problem situations are better for learning. This issue contains two articles that examine the effects of "making it real" in computer architecture and human-computer interaction.

In this article we propose building sets of problems rooted in the same concept, a process that allows students to develop understanding and take on increasingly complex problems. By beginning with "foundation stories" and using strategies similar to those for literary constructs, we have dramatically increased our students' mathematical…

A study was conducted to promote higher order cognitive skills (HOCS) in a chemistry class using the GOAL (Gather, Organize, Analyze, and Learn) method. Students were assigned four qualitative problems specifically designed to be solved with the method over the course of the semester outside of normal homework and testing. The problems served as a…

This paper describes the creation and evolution of an undergraduate dynamics and vibrations course for civil engineering students. Incorporating vibrations into the course allows students to see and study "real" civil engineering applications of the course content. This connection of academic principles to real life situations is in…

This study compared the creative outcomes in student work resulting from two pedagogical approaches to creative problem solving activities. A secondary goal was to validate the Consensual Assessment Technique (CAT) as a means of assessing creativity. Linear models for problem solving and design processes serve as the current paradigm in classroom…

Using new perspectives on mathematics as a cultural and social activity and new research on learning outside the school, the authors ask readers to rethink the problem of mathematical achievement for all students, and for Latino/a and black students in particular. The paper argues that doing so will help those students connect how they learn in…

This study aims to develop an electronic library-based learning environment to support teachers in developing web-based problem-solving activities and analyzing the online problem-solving behaviors of students. Two experiments were performed in this study. In study 1, an experiment on 103 elementary and high school teachers (the learning activity…

The increasing prominence of standardized testing to assess student learning motivated the current investigation. We propose that standardized achievement test scores assess competencies determined more by intelligence than by self-control, whereas report card grades assess competencies determined more by self-control than by intelligence. In…

Providing exploratory activities prior to explicit instruction can facilitate learning. However, the level of guidance provided during the exploration has largely gone unstudied. In this study, we examined the effects of 1 form of guidance, feedback, during exploratory mathematics problem solving for children with varying levels of prior domain…

Despite much public discussion about the importance of creativity and innovation-friendly teaching in Finnish higher education, the impact of the general opinion on actual teaching practices has been limited. In the Finnish computer science education the teaching mostly follows a pattern of lectures, fixed exercise sets, and exams. With this…

A large body of research has shown that for novice learners, instruction that relies more heavily on worked examples than on problem solving, is more effective for learning as shown by higher test performance. Moreover, this beneficial effect is often obtained with less acquisition time and lower cognitive load during acquisition and test phase.…